The Illuminati

June 28

• Dungeons & Raids

  • Blackwing Descent

    • Atramedes's Sonar Pulses are properly moving toward raid members when spawned underneath him.
  • Firelands

    • Fiery Blood from Fire Scorpions now only affects other Fire Scorpions and Giant Fire Scorpions.
    • Fire Turtles should no longer keep players in combat after their pack is killed.
• Items

  • Alliance and Horde Guild Battle Standards cannot be used inside the Firelands raid.
  • Both Faldren Tillsdale and Jamus'Vaz (Valor Point vendors) now display items grouped together in the following manner: rings, necks, bracers, relics, ranged weapons, thrown weapons, then tier sets.
  • The Severed Visionary Tentacle is no longer infinitely applying to characters.
• Quests & Creatures

  • Elemental Bonds Quest Chain

    • Aggra's bubble is now significantly larger and has a sparkle effect, making it easier for players to locate her when on the quest Elemental Bonds: Desire.
    • Players should be able to see Therazane and turn in the quest Into Constant Earth while at any stage of Deepholm progression without issue.

General

• Players with a copy of the original World of Warcraft who had not yet upgraded to The Burning Crusade have had their accounts upgraded to access the content and features of The Burning Crusade expansion at no additional cost.

Currency

• Conquest & Honor Points

  • All existing Conquest Points in the Currency tab have been converted to Honor Points. All Honor Points exceeding the 4,000 point cap have been converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point and mailed to characters.

Dungeons & Raids

• Baradin Hold

  • Occu'thar has broken free from his cage and presents an all-new boss challenge to players in 10- and 25-player arrangements who control Tol Barad. This boss will be available with the start of Season 10, one week after the release of patch 4.2.

Guilds

• Guilds of level 3 or above may no longer be disbanded. Guild leaders wishing to leave a guild will need to promote another member to Guild Master first.

Updated June 28: Honor Points Capped at 4000 During Patch 4.2 Maintenance

During maintenance the change that was intended to be applied for the start of Season 10 next week, which was to cap Honor Points at 4000 and convert any points above the cap to gold, was inadvertently applied early. This means that everyone who would have down-converted Conquest to Honor over the 4000 cap had those additional points converted to gold at a rate of 35 silver per point and sent to them via in-game mail.

We’re still researching what steps led to the error, but unfortunately due to the nature of the currency conversion that took place, we’ll be unable to reverse the change, remove the delivered gold, or reinstate the surplus Honor Points.

We apologize greatly for this error.

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Arena and Rated Battleground Season 9 is scheduled to end as early as June 28. At that point we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 9 ends. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. All Season 9 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the end of Season 9 and will coincide with the awarding of Season 9 titles and mounts. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. In addition, Season 10 rewards will be made available for purchase with Conquest Points awarded during the new season. All Team and Personal Ratings will be wiped when Season 10 begins. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will carry over into Season 10.

With Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2), Ragnaros the Firelord returns with a burning vengeance to challenge players on his home turf, the elemental realm of twisting flames and churning magma.

To get a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Ragnaros's domain, the Insider recently sat down with Jonathan Dumont (lead level designer) and Gary Platner (lead environment artist) from the World of Warcraft team to discuss the creative process and art philosophy behind the game’s newest 10- and 25-player raid instance and accompanying quest hub. So read on, and learn how the Firelands evolved from rough concept art to a fully fleshed-out in-game environment.

Where did the ideas and initial concepts for the Firelands come from?

Jonathan: We knew early on that we wanted the Firelands to feel alien and formidable, a place of infinite height and size, and not just an ordinary volcanic cave with lava. We liked the outer-dimensional aspect of it and focused on ideas that involved a lot of floating islands and magma falls. It needed to feel epic and dangerous and, most importantly, like somewhere our players would enjoy exploring. So once we had our initial ideas together, one of our level designers, Victor Chong, created a quick block-out of the geometry, and it triggered a new flood of ideas and concept art from the art team that got us going from there.

Gary: True, though it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes an artist will create a concept first, and then an exterior level designer will create a rough mock-up from that. Other times a designer will first create a rough map in Illustrator before it goes to a level designer for further development. No matter who starts the process, there’s always a lot of back and forth between level designers, encounter designers, concept artists, and environment artists to make sure we’re working with the most epic — and feasible — ideas.

How did you focus on the ideas that eventually made it into the final version of the zone? Are there any visual elements that did not make the cut?

Gary: A lot of times we don’t know how something will work out until we go ahead and give it a try. One of the early visual concepts we tried for the zone were these octagonal rock columns, which you can find here on Earth in areas with a lot of volcanic activity. You see them in places like the Devils Postpile in California or the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. These rock columns worked great for the spider area in the Firelands, especially after an artist painted them with glowing fiery web textures. One idea we tried that didn’t make the cut were fire columns shaped like trees. We have trees in most outdoor zones, so we thought we’d add tree-like flames to the Firelands, but tree shapes – even burning tree shapes – ultimately felt out of place.

Jonathan: Also, we initially wanted to make the Firelands a lot busier by adding lots of floating islands above the main island and having all these crazy lava waterfalls pouring across the playable area. We still did some of that, but we scaled that idea way back because it was making the zone visually confusing. We also tried having a boundless lava ocean under the main island, but that ended up creating a horizon line and taking away from the sense of infinity that we were trying to achieve, so we cut it. It makes the Firelands feel a lot bigger when you walk up to the edge of the main island, look down, and see nothing but swirling clouds of ash below.

What visual challenges did the Firelands present when the World of Warcraft artists began building the zone?

Jonathan: The main thing we had to keep in mind was that the instance is just the stage and ultimately the players are going to provide the action. So in addition to everything we put into the zone, there are also going to be players, monsters, pets, and all their spell effects going off during the raid. We didn’t want the action to be overwhelmed by bursting fires and lava explosions, but at the same time, it’s the Firelands, so you definitely need some of that! Finding a visual balance between the spectacular and the practical was a challenge.

Gary: As an outdoor instance, the Firelands is actually the work of two different art teams. The dungeon team works on the enclosed interior areas of the instance, such as Sulfuron Keep, and the environment team works on the exterior terrain areas, such as the Molten Fields. Making seamless transitions between both types of geometry was a fairly challenging undertaking. We had some help from our new texture-blending technology that was implemented with Cataclysm, but there were still a few rough edges to smooth out. One of our early bugs that we had to resolve was that the skybox was showing through the walls of the interior areas. You could see the sky through the ashen haze, even though you were inside Sulfuron Keep!

How did the encounters designers, animators, and environment artists work together to bring the Firelands and its raid encounters to life?

Jonathan: Well, I don’t want to risk spoiling any of the boss encounters… but I will say that the encounter designers had some really interesting ideas on how to make some of the areas much more interactive. We all thought the boss encounters were distinct and epic to begin with, so it wasn’t hard to create supporting areas for them. The Shatterstone area in particular features a volcano boss and full set piece designed by the dungeon art team that also includes animation and terrain work. It’s a great example of all of the game-development disciplines working together to create a memorable encounter.

How do you bring the raid instance to life?

Gary: The terrain doesn’t actually animate, so we had to create a sense of molten lava using particle effects and props. The lava was created with the game’s improved liquid technology… the same liquid tech we used for the new water effects in Cataclysm. We were able to create heat-shimmer effects with animated props and we added a lot of particle flames and fire spouts throughout the Firelands.

How did you tie all of the Firelands’ different visual elements and points of interest together?

Jonathan: Players may not consciously notice this, but we framed the whole exterior portion of the raid zone around Sulfuron Keep and tried to make it visible throughout as much of the zone as possible. This gives players a constant visual point of reference on the horizon, and also gives them a subtle reminder of where they are ultimately headed as they progress through the raid instance. For Sulfuron Keep itself, the dungeon art team created an awesome-looking building with a distinct profile, and we used it as a backdrop for a lot of the other areas as well. We also wanted to create unique areas for the boss encounters, while still making sure that they all felt like they belonged in the domain of fire in the elemental plane. The Lair of Beth’tilac [the Red Widow] serves as a good example of how the design and art teams embraced the fiery hot visual themes, while still making a unique and memorable point of interest for the boss.

Can you tell us about the new boss models? How was Ragnaros visually updated for Rage of the Firelands?

Gary: Ragnaros’s model was completely rebuilt from scratch. Ragnaros was given a new hammer, new armor, and best of all, legs!

Jonathan: Yup, this is the first time players get to see Ragnaros on his home turf, so we wanted to make him look even bigger, stronger, and tougher than before. He is now much closer to his seat of power and we needed to convey that through his model. There are many other bosses in the instance as well, and we wanted to get away from filling a zone with just elementals. So you can expect to see a lot of variety in the Firelands.

Thanks for your time. Anything else you’d like to share before you go?

Jonathan: I hope players enjoy the Firelands raid and the Molten Front quest hub. We had a lot of fun making them!

Gary: Yeah, creating the Firelands was a great experience. I think we’ve learned that we get good results when we break with convention and just start running with all our crazy visual concepts. It’s a trend we hope to continue in the future.

• Recruit-A-Friend now awards bonus experience and free level grants to level 80, up from level 60.